Computer Vision News - August 2017

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unfair that America is so good at
attracting talent. What is your take on
that?
Julie: The United States is a wonderful
place to live, and it’s a great place to
come and work and to expand your
capabilities. But for instance Amazon is
really a global company and we do try
to build our technology centers around
the world so that we can attract people
who don’t want to transition to
another country and give them the
opportunity to work on really
interesting problems.
Xin: Just within in the US, different
locations are very different. So people,
because of their personal preference or
family, they want to be at different
locations. At HERE technologies, in the
US, we have offices in Chicago, in
Boulder, and San Francisco. So this
accommodates for talent and their
interests. So for example Chicago is a
very sophisticated city and a good
place to live with families. In Boulder
there is a lot of outdoor activities with
a nice scenery. San Francisco is a very
vibrant area. So I think this way we
have offices with a variety of
coefficients.
Julie: I think that also speaks to the fact
that we recognise that it’s hard to hire
great people and we have to be flexible
about where seek people out, and
where they work. Because it’s less
about the employer demanding where
you are going to be, as it is about
where you want to work.
Terrence: Nowadays most of the
companies are global, like Siemens as
well. Siemens is originally a German
company, but we also have a global
presence and the size in the US is very
big. We do a lot of things to encourage
STEM force from school. We provide all
kinds of tools for teachers, parents and
also for students to engage them in the
study of STEM topics. We also have a
competition in technology and science,
a fellowship and scholarships, to
encourage STEM workforce in school.
So all this is not just to take the
graduate like a consumer, but really try
to engage the development of the
STEM workforce.
Ralph: The next questions connects to
what has been said about recruitment
possibility of big companies. Some of
the smaller companies complain that
if the big guys - and Siemens and
Amazon are certainly one of them -
are taking all the talent with
conditions that we are not able to
meet, they are not able to compete. I
would love to hear what you have to
say!
Tianli: As a start-up company we
actually do have some disadvantage
when competing with bigger companies
in recruitment. I think what we use as an
advantage as a small company is that we
can let the people choose to work on
more interesting problems. Our
company is making AI toy and robots. A
lot of people are attracted by the work
Expo Spotlight Panel 35
Competition
From left: Ralph, Tianli, Terrence, Julie, Xin
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